Tulpan: A gentle story about a vanishing way of life
[Askhat Kuchinchirekov as Asa, and a cute little lamb as a cute little lamb, in Tulpan.]
Southern Kazakhstan is a tough place: pretty much the only way of getting by is to raise animals — hardly an easy way of life in any land, but made very much harder by the bleak landscape of the steppes, and the unforgiving weather there: relentless dust storms, intense sun, and freezing winters. And when you learn that this story is set in a place called Betpak Dala — which translates to ‘the Hunger Steppe’ — you might be tempted to pass this one over as potentially too depressing (perhaps guilt-inducing) to watch after a good dinner.
But I’d warn you against that idea. Tulpan is not just another didactic story about grindingly poor people oppressed by circumstance and tradition. First of all, there’s a lot of humor and tenderness in the film. (And enough incongruity, such as Asa tromping around in the desert in his Navy uniform, to give it a touch of surrealism.) Second, although it does touch seriously upon the challenges faced by present-day nomadic shepherds in the Kazakh steppes — who, somewhat like sharecroppers, largely tend the flocks of other men in exchange for few animals and scant pay — these issues remain in the background of a story about a young man, Asa, who feels the deepest kind of love for this hard-to-love place. And even though there was so much dust in this film I felt like coughing after about ten minutes, I think I began to feel a little bit of that affection myself by the time the credits rolled.
Perhaps that’s because this place and way of life has been so lovingly photographed by director Sergey Dvortsevoy and DP Jola Dylewska. But it’s also because the actors are able to convey a sense of why people might choose to live this life, with its intense connection to the natural world and to the animals they raise. More than that, they have created a warm picture of domestic life in these extreme circumstances. You can almost place yourself in that yurt, experiencing those same daily routines, and feeling the same annoyances they have with one another’s habits.
As to the story: Asa has returned home from a stint in the Navy — yes, they do have one— to live with his sister and her husband while pursuing one aim: to obtain and grow a flock of his own. But he can’t do that yet, as his “Comrade Boss” insists, not without reason, that he be married before getting his own animals: it’s just not possible for one person to both tend animals and provide for daily life. There is simply too much work involved. Asa must have a wife to cook and clean.
But there’s one big problem with this plan: the only marriageable girl for hundreds of miles around, Tulpan, has rejected him. She thinks he has big ears; besides which, he doesn’t even have a flock of his own. Pointing out that Prince Charles has even bigger ears than he does — “an American prince” — is unavailing. It soon becomes clear that she has ulterior motives for rejecting him, reasons that put Asa pretty much out of the picture.
Even beyond that, Asa is having a tough time of things. For one thing, tensions are high because lambs keep getting stillborn for no obvious reason; certainly one of the most effective (if depressing) metaphors for a dying way of life that I’ve encountered for a while. Plus Asa is still more of a sailor than a shepherd: he knows plenty about octopi, but very little about sheep, and his mistakes just make a bad situation even worse. Finally, he is, after all, living in a one-room yurt with his sister and her husband, who, humorless to begin with, is starting to get more than a little irritable and sleepless. Obviously it’s been a while since he’s gotten any.
So everything conspires to drive Asa out of his sister’s home, and away from this way of life to one of Kazakhstan’s cities. But when Asa was a sailor, he learned a lovely tradition: to draw his dream on the back of his wide uniform collar. There he has drawn a sparkling white yurt, some camels, a flock of sheep, a large farm, and a starry sky overhanging it all. It’s an image that is shown at two key points in the film: it’s all that he wants in life, and nothing can keep him from pursuing it — not even his own feelings of discouragement.
Tulpan is playing for a week, starting tonight, at the Lumiere Theater. Slow-paced, gentle film with lots of memorable moments. No violence, some sexuality. Recommended.
posted: 09 May 8
under: The Next Frame